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Guess which of these two phrases US President Donald Trump referred to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:
1) "Very dishonest and weak"
2) "He is a good competitor, and I think the word competitor is a compliment"
Answer: Trump dedicated the first sentence to Trudeau last month and the second to Putin on Monday, after the first sentence. to have met. This may surprise anyone who remembers that, according to the United States, Canada is a Allied Democracy and Russia a threatens its security whose government violates human rights and maintains the Political prisoners
But the truth is that Trump seems to be improving more and more with powerful leaders like Putin or Kim Jong-a from North Korea, and distancing himself from Washington's partners in America or Europe .
The phenomenon has been criticized by members of the Republican Trump Party and is considered unprecedented for an American president, at least since the last century.
"It's unprecedented since the Second World War and probably in American history from the beginning," says Joan Hoff, an expert from the University of Chicago. 39 State of Montana in the history of the US presidency and diplomacy at BBC World.
Sympathy for Autocrats "
The contrast between the way Trump treats the traditional allies of the United States and the leaders of the countries that his government considers hostile became clear during his tour of Europe in recent days.
Trump questioned how British Prime Minister Theresa May was managing the Brexit negotiation to leave the Union of the European Union, he suggested continuing the block, that he described as a US commercial competitor, and demanded more military spending from NATO partners.
But the usual your cutting edge and combative Trump with other leaders dispelled Monday when he appeared in Finland with Putin at the first bilateral summit of the two presidents.
Trump cast doubt on the conclusion of his own news agencies intelligence that Russia interfered in the 2016 US elections. and noted that Putin was "extremely strong and powerful in his refusal" of these reports.
Also he avoided criticizing the Russian leader for the annexation of Crimea and allowed himself to be explained the differing opinions of both in this matter.
"It was a very constructive time we spent together," Trump told his press conference with Putin, who gave him a 2018 World Cup ball.
.
"The damage inflicted by the naivety, selfishness, false equivalence and sympathy of President Trump against the autocrats is difficult to calculate," said Republican Senator John McCain .
"No previous president abjectly declined in front of a tyrant ," he said in a statement.
"Personality or Character"
This is not the first time that Trump has attracted attention approaching leaders accused of authoritarianism and human rights violations, without referring to these problems in public.
For example, in November, he met with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who, according to human rights groups, is encouraging a campaign with thousands of extrajudicial executions to crack down on human rights. drug, Last month, after breaking the consensus at the G7 summit in Canada and accused Trudeau of being "dishonest and weak," he met Kim Jong-un, of North Korea, to discuss Denuclearization
Although the results of this historic meeting in Singapore are still uncertain, Trump has since alluded to the North Korean leader as "funny", "intelligent" and "talented".
Michael Shifter and David Toppelberg of the Inter-American Dialogue Center for Hemispheric Analysis believe that the exception to the rule is the powerful leaders of Venezuela and Cuba, whom Trump may have been facing for reasons of domestic and ideological politics .
"It is difficult to reconcile the badent of the President – in fact, the frequent praise – to the strongmen of the whole world with their concern for democracy and human rights in Venezuela and Cuba, "they said. the two experts in an article of opinion in the newspaper T the New York Times Monday
Of course, it is far from being a novelty that a American president. meet leaders considered dictators or autocrats from different regions.
But experts like Hoff point out that the difference with Trump is that it seems to lack a clear strategy or purpose.
"He meets these leaders because perhaps in terms of personality or character can better relate to them than with Western leaders who are allies," says this former head of the Center.
Others believe that Trump's attitude towards strong leaders is related to his human training. who had the habit of directly managing his businesses.
more comfortable with the authoritarian model of doing business, where you act alone without the checks and balances that accompany the democratic process, "says Joshua Sandman, an expert on presidential behavior at the University of New Haven, at the BBC Mundo.
But he also argues that, criticizing NATO's allies , the European Union or the G7, Trump wants to be firm in front of countries which, in his opinion, are trading unfairly with the United States.
"It's part of the personality that he wants to project as hard as diplomatically," says Sandman.
"And the people inside (US) who voted for him (…) like that, think it's genuine ."
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